AngelaChen

Revenue, however, missed expectations, and shares edged down less than 1% in premarket trading.

EMC, like many others in the tech sector, has been affected by shifts in exchange rates that reduce the dollar value of sales abroad completed in other currencies. The company expects that currency impacts will continue into future quarters.

EMC, besides selling systems used to store corporate business information, maintains an unusual federation of related companies that collaborate as well as compete at times. The biggest is VMware Inc., the Silicon Valley software company that EMC bought in 2004 and later took public, retaining an ownership stake that currently stands at about 80%.

The federation structure has been under attack since last summer by Elliott Management Corp. The activist hedge fund has pressed EMC management to spin off its remaining stake in VMware and pursue other strategic opportunities to help boost EMC's share price.

The Wall Street Journal in September reported that EMC has discussed merger possibilities with other companies, including Hewlett-Packard Co., and later reported that those talks appear to have ended. Neither company has commented on the topic.

Mr. Tucci has defended the EMC structure but also acknowledged the need to make some adjustments, amid factors such as growing competition with VMware. He didn't spell any changes in Thursday's news release.

Pressure to make immediate changes eased on Jan. 12, when EMC announced it was appointing two new directors that had been approved by Elliott. The investor also agreed to certain standstill provisions and other concessions through September, including voting in favor of EMC's proposed slate of directors.

EMC folds a portion of VMware's financial results into its own income statement. VMware on Tuesday reported that fourth-quarter net income declined 3% on revenues that rose 15%.

Another part of the federation, Pivotal Software, posted an 18% revenue increase in the fourth quarter, EMC said Thursday.

EMC said revenue in its core "information infrastructure business," which includes large data-storage systems that use disk drives, posted a 2% increase.

In all, EMC reported fourth-quarter net income of $1.15 billion, or 56 cents a share, up from a profit in the year-earlier period of $1 billion, or 48 cents a share. Revenues rose 5% to $7.05 billion.

Excluding stock-based compensation and other items, EMC said it posted earnings of 69 cents per share, compared with 60 cents a year earlier. Analysts had expected earnings on that basis of 68 cents a share on $7.1 billion in revenue, according to Thomson First Call.

EMC stresses annual financial projections over figures for individual quarters. On Thursday, the company predicted earnings this year of $1.98 per share on $26.1 billion in revenue.

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